


"Garak?"

by prairiecrow



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Monologue, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-21
Updated: 2012-09-21
Packaged: 2017-11-14 18:42:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/518339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prairiecrow/pseuds/prairiecrow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A one-sided conversation with Julian Bashir.</p>
            </blockquote>





	"Garak?"

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Set shortly before "The Wire". 2) Pre-slash if you have the right goggles on, straight friendship if you don't.

He drives me absolutely crazy! 

Every sentence he offers has at least two different meanings, and his smile — that damned, sleek, self-satisfied smile — gives me no sure clue which way he's drawing the truth, like a scent-trail through tall grass. And oh, can he make it twist and turn: no snake was ever more limber or more venomous, although he hasn't yet fully unsheathed his fangs and sunk them into my hand when I try to tweak his tail. And he could — I'm sure of it. He could kill me today, and wear that same smiling mask tomorrow as on all the other days I've known him. 

But he doesn't. I'm of too much use to him as a point of contact to Starfleet, I suppose, as well as providing him with free entertainment. A station as small as Deep Space Nine must seem horribly confining to a man like him, a man with such cosmopolitan tastes in art and culture, and with such a keen interest in politics.

My God, how we argue! For every point I bring up he seems to have three counterpoints ready; if I didn't know for a fact that Cardassians aren't telepathic as a rule, I'd swear he was reading my mind as he sits across the table from me, sipping another of his innumerable cups of rokassa juice. "It soothes my nerves," he tells me, and certainly he does seem genuinely aggrieved at times, even about something so small as the cut of a pair of trousers passing in the crowd. I've got to admit that he has a finely developed artistic sense: I've even let him design a suit or two for me, with results that, while less flamboyant than my usual choice in clothing, have been unarguably and successfully elegant. If you'd told me two years ago that a Cardassian could be so obsessed with the smallest details of fit, or so fussy, or so damned _coquettish_ , darting me glances that would be flirtatious from any woman, but from a man…

It's not as if I lean in that direction anyway. 

And even if I did… getting sexually or romantically involved with a Cardassian spy would be suicidally stupid. Meeting one for lunch every week is almost as bad, at least if you listen to Miles and the Major. And I suppose they're right — after all, I have no proof that Garak gives a damn about me one way or the other. I'd _have_ to be crazy to think that his overtures mean that he considers me a friend, or even a valued acquaintance beyond what I can do for him in a strategic sense.

Still, if all I am to him is a means to an end… well, I can live with that, if it means I'll be seeing that smile over our regular table in the Replimat tomorrow. After all, life would be pretty damned boring without a little madness to leaven the dough, wouldn't you say?

THE END


End file.
